


The Rule

by telperion_15



Category: Primeval
Genre: Drunkenness, F/F, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gossip, Jinxed, Underwear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 23:05:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telperion_15/pseuds/telperion_15
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jenny's bad day turns out to be not quite so bad as she expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rule

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written as a birthday fic for bella_farfalla.

Jenny Lewis had a rule, and the rule was Coordination.  
  
Working in PR meant that it was important to present a polished and assured persona to world (doubly so now she had to persuade hapless members of the public that no, they really _hadn’t_ seen a dinosaur in their local park), and dressing to impress helped her achieve that. Therefore she always made sure that her shoes matched her belt, her scarf matched her bag, her top and bottom halves didn’t clash, and that her lipstick and eyeshadow were in harmony.  
  
She even extended the Rule to the things people didn’t see. After all, you never knew when you might get hit by a bus – or in her case, an angry prehistoric creature – and last thing she needed was for the cute doctors in A&E to cut away her clothes and find a mismatching set of underwear. She might be hypothetically bleeding all over the place, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t still make an effort.  
  
So she should have known the day was going to turn out badly when she opened a drawer that morning and discovered only a red bra and a black pair of panties. The week had already been pretty disastrous, with one anomaly after another, and there hadn’t really been time for laundry. Which now left her in this rather annoying situation.  
  
Jenny sighed, and grabbed the offending articles from the drawer. She didn’t really have a choice about wearing them, after all, and if she stood here and frowned at them for much longer, she was going to be late for work.  
  
But as she quickly got dressed, she mentally braced herself for the raft of problems that she just knew would be coming her way.  
  
*   *   *   *   *  
  
However, all in all, the day turned out to be a surprisingly easy one. Yes, she’d had to endure a long and tedious meeting with Lester, and yes, she’d had a mountain of paperwork to get done, thanks to the excitement of earlier in the week. But for once there was no anomaly, no creatures, and no running for her life. And Jenny’s book that definitely meant this counted as a _good_ day.  
  
She’d even found the time for a quick coffee and a gossip with Sarah. The other woman had been at the ARC for a couple of months now, and Jenny had quickly found her to be a friendly and amusing person. It had become a ritual for them to get together whenever they both had the time and have what she was sure all the men would disparagingly call ‘girly chats’.  
  
And Jenny supposed they were ‘girly’ really. But she enjoyed them, nonetheless. Her career up to this point hadn’t really left her much time for socialising (she didn’t count all the parties she’d been forced to attend in her jobs before starting at the ARC – they had been work, and besides, all the other shallow, ‘glamorous’ people at them set her teeth on edge), and it was nice to have someone she could just chat to and have a bit of a giggle with.  
  
Today they’d only had fifteen minutes for their get-together, but it was enough time for Sarah to reveal that she was sure she’d heard two people making out in the broom cupboard on the top floor, and for Jenny to relate in return that she suspected that Abby and Connor had finally done the deed, but just hadn’t told anyone. For a moment they’d both wondered if the two events were connected, and then giggled and let the matter drop.  
  
“Why don’t you come round to my place tonight?” Sarah said, as Jenny stood up to leave, swallowing her last mouthful of coffee hurriedly. “We could have a few glasses of wine, and bit more of a gossip…I’ll cook,” she finished hopefully.  
  
Jenny considered for a few moments. It sounded nice, and she was flattered at the invitation, but… “I’m exhausted,” she said regretfully. “It’s been such a busy week that all I really want to do tonight it take a long hot bubble bath, and then go to bed. Maybe a rain check? How about next week – providing we’re not run off our feet again?” She hoped Sarah didn’t think she was fobbing her off, and held her breath slightly until the other woman smiled and nodded.  
  
“Of course, no problem. Next week it is.”  
  
Jenny smiled back, and then went on her way. Today really wasn’t turning out to be so bad, after all.  
  
*   *   *   *   *  
  
She should have realised it couldn’t last.  
  
The mountain of paperwork took all afternoon, and a bit longer, so it was past six o’clock before Jenny left the ARC. She didn’t mind that, though. It was satisfying to have got it all done so she didn’t have to worry about it any more, and in addition, leaving later meant there was less traffic on the roads, making her journey home much shorter.  
  
She was already thinking about her bubble bath as she stepped through her front door, and decided that a quick dinner was the way to go, so she could start relaxing all the sooner. She smiled in anticipation as she shrugged off her coat and headed down the hall.  
  
But her good mood evaporated as soon as she entered her bedroom and saw the devastation.  
  
The mess that was her bed attracted her attention first. It looked like it had been doused in water, and as she looked more closely she realised that the detritus littering her expensive Egyptian cotton bed covers was chunks of plaster.  
  
With a sinking heart, she looked up to see a large hole in the ceiling, surrounded by water stains, some of which were still dripping slightly. She knew exactly what had happened. Her flat was on the top floor of the building, and the hot water tank that serviced the residents was located in the roof space right above her bedroom. Something had obviously gone seriously wrong with it.  
  
Sighing loudly, Jenny looked at her watch. Seven o’clock on a Friday evening. She sincerely doubted that she’d get a plumber to come and look at this now – it would have to wait until tomorrow. And even if she cleared the mess off the bed and changed the sheets, she didn’t fancy sleeping under a gaping hole in the ceiling. She had no idea if anything further could go wrong, and she didn’t fancy being woken up in the middle of the night by more water or plaster raining down on her.  
  
Admitting temporary defeat, Jenny went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine, trying simultaneously to shake the feeling that the world was laughing at her. She should have taken the morning’s omen more seriously, and not been lulled into a false sense of security. But she’d let her guard down and now she was paying the price.  
  
Part of her realised she was being ridiculously superstitious – there was no way a hole in her bedroom ceiling had anything to do with the fact that her underwear didn’t match, she knew that. But she still couldn’t help feeling that she should have seen this coming – it was a fitting end to a terrible week.  
  
Carrying her wine through to the living room, Jenny surveyed her sofa unenthusiastically. With her bed in the state it was, this was her only option for tonight. But it wasn’t long enough to stretch out on, and although it was an aesthetically pleasing piece of furniture, it wasn’t actually that comfortable – the older armchair in the corner saw far more use day to day, for good reason.  
  
But she had no choice really. Sighing again, Jenny resigned herself to a night of broken sleep.  
  
Unless…  
  
She hesitated for a moment, and then, before she could change her mind, picked up the phone and dialled Sarah’s number.  
  
*   *   *   *   *  
  
The door opened quickly after Jenny pushed the bell, and Sarah ushered her inside.  
  
“Thanks for this,” Jenny said, as she set her small overnight bag down on the floor next to her shoes. “Sorry to be a bother.”  
  
Sarah waved an airy hand. “Not a problem,” she replied. “Why wouldn’t I help a friend in need?” She led Jenny through to the living room and pointed to a chair. “I’ll go and make up the bed in the spare room in a minute. But in the meantime, I think a glass of wine is in order, don’t you?”  
  
“That sounds like a fabulous idea,” Jenny agreed. The glass she’d had while standing despondently in her kitchen already seemed like a distant memory, and Sarah’s offer was very welcome indeed.  
  
While Sarah fetched the wine, Jenny looked around the large living room. There was a fair amount of clutter (what was it with academic types and mess, she wondered?), but even so, she could still appreciate the underlying aesthetics of the space – ‘character features’, she believed the estate agents called them – and wondered how Sarah had come by this place.  
  
“This is a lovely house,” she said, as Sarah came back into the room and handed her a glass of chilled white wine. “How long have you lived here?”  
  
“About five years,” Sarah said. “My Gran left it to me in her will. We always got on well. I think she was always disappointed in how stuffy my parents turned out to be, and saw me as a bit of a free spirit. She definitely approved of my choice of career – she always said that any civilisation that produced Cleopatra was a suitable one for me to be studying.”  
  
Jenny chuckled. “Was she aware that Cleopatra was married to her brother?” she asked.  
  
Sarah grinned. “I suspect not. But even so, she probably wouldn’t have cared.”  
  
Sipping her wine, Jenny smiled at Sarah over the rim of the glass. “Thanks,” she said again. “Sleeping on my sofa really wasn’t an appealing prospect.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” replied Sarah. “Now, do you fancy something to eat? I had dinner earlier, but there’s some of the risotto I made left over – would that be okay?”  
  
“That would be lovely,” said Jenny gratefully. Her stomach rumbled. “I’m starving.”  
  
One portion of risotto and several more glasses of wine later, Jenny and Sarah were sitting next to each other on the sofa, giggling over the increasingly outlandish rumours they were concocting about their colleagues.  
  
“Well, what about Danny and Becker?” said Sarah. “Surely testing the security systems can’t be all they’re doing when they’re crawling around in the air ducts together.”  
  
Jenny wrinkled her nose in mock-disgust, and then started giggling again. “That seems like a match made in hell."  
  
“No, a match made in hell would be Danny and Lester,” Sarah corrected her.  
  
They both thought about that for a moment, and then shuddered in unison.  
  
“I wonder if there are any rumours going around about either of us,” Jenny mused.  
  
“Well, one of the lab technicians thinks _you_ have the hots for Danny,” Sarah said mischievously.  
  
“What? You have got to be kidding! He’s so not my type.”  
  
“I didn’t think so, but the tech seemed so happy with her little theory that I didn’t have the heart to disabuse her.”  
  
“Oh, thanks very much,” Jenny said, snorting in a rather unladylike manner. “You know, if Danny ever finds out about these rumours, his ego is going to be unbearable. He’d just love to be suspected of shagging either Becker or me.”  
  
Sarah laughed. “I can see I’m going to have to get you tipsy more often,” she said. “A lot of your polished façade drops away when you’re drunk.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“Well, would you ever use the word ‘shagging’ normally?”  
  
“I suppose not,” Jenny replied. “Although it’s hardly a word I’d use in everyday conversation anyway.” The she grinned. “So, come on then – did the tech have any theories about you as well?”  
  
Sarah smiled slowly, the expression confusing Jenny a little, although she wasn’t really sure why. “As a matter of fact, she did. Apparently, I was going to be very disappointed that you had hooked up with Danny.”  
  
Jenny rolled her eyes. “What, you too? How can she possibly think that Danny is sleeping with both of us _and_ the captain?”  
  
“I don’t think that’s quite what she meant.”  
  
“I don’t….oh my god. She thinks you’ve got your eye on me? How ridiculous.”  
  
Sarah didn’t say anything, although an odd expression crossed her face. Jenny blinked.  
  
“Oh my god,” she said again. “She’s right, isn’t she?”  
  
Sarah looked away. “This was a stupid idea,” she said in a low voice. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.” She started to rise from the sofa, but Jenny’s hand on her arm stopped her.  
  
“Wait.” Thinking back, Jenny remembered how well she and Sarah had clicked, almost as soon as Sarah had started on the project. She remembered how much she always enjoyed their little chats and coffee breaks, and how pretty she’d always thought Sarah was when she smiled.  
  
“Wait,” she said again. “There’s no need to be embarrassed. I…I think I’m flattered.” She smiled up at Sarah. “And maybe I’m a bit more than flattered.”  
  
Sarah sat down again, but she didn’t look convinced. “That’s just the wine talking.”  
  
“Maybe it is,” Jenny allowed. “A bit. But I’m not _that_ drunk.” She winked. “And besides, you’re a much better prospect than Danny Quinn.”  
  
That made Sarah laugh, and some of her discomfort seemed to fade.  
  
“Why don’t you kiss me, and we’ll see what happens?” Jenny suggested, feeling daring. Undoubtedly, Sarah was at least partially right, and the alcohol was making her bolder. But she liked the feeling of confidence, and she didn’t regret the words she’d just spoken.  
  
Sarah hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. “Okay.” She leaned in, pausing for a moment with her lips just millimetres from Jenny’s, and then closed the gap.  
  
This wasn’t the first time Jenny had kissed another woman, although the last time had probably been at university, more years ago than she cared to admit. And come to think of it, she’d probably been drunk on that occasion too, although she couldn’t quite remember.  
  
Sarah’s lips were soft against hers, and her skin was smooth where it brushed against Jenny’s cheek. She tasted faintly spicy, and Jenny couldn’t decide whether that was down to the risotto they’d both eaten, or whether it was the flavour of Sarah herself.  
  
One thing was for certain, though – Sarah was a _good_ kisser, and Jenny sighed softly as she kissed back.  
  
It ended too soon for her liking, and her eyes fluttered open when Sarah moved away to see a slightly uncertain look on the other woman’s face despite her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.  
  
“That was nice,” Jenny said, when she’d gathered her breath. “Actually, it was more than nice.”  
  
Sarah’s expression cleared at her words, and she leaned closer again. “Would you mind if I did it again, then?”  
  
“Not at all.”  
  
This time the kiss went on for longer, and after a few moments of mental dithering, Jenny settled her hand on Sarah’s back, sliding across the soft cotton of the other woman’s blouse as she pulled her closer.  
  
Sarah made a pleased noise, her own hand coming to rest on Jenny’s side, just at the bottom of her ribcage. Jenny could feel Sarah’s wrist brushing against the bottom of her breast, and she was surprised at the reaction it created in her. It had been some time since anyone had touched her like this – even before she’d broken off her engagement, intimate relations with her fiancé had been lukewarm at best.  
  
They were both breathing erratically by the time the second kiss ended, although this time Jenny didn’t let Sarah pull away, her hand on the other woman’s back keeping her close. She was pleased to note that Sarah’s own hand didn’t move either.  
  
For a moment they just looked at each other, and then Jenny took a deep breath, resisting the urge to reach out and grab her wine so she could take a mouthful to fortify herself. “Why don’t we take this somewhere more…comfortable?” she murmured softly.  
  
Sarah looked rather surprised at that, and really, Jenny was scarcely less so. She couldn’t quite believe that she was doing this. Another of her rules was not to get involved with work colleagues. It was one of her reasons that her flirtation with Cutter had never really gone anywhere. That, and the man insisted on calling her by someone else’s name half the time.  
  
But liaisons with people you worked with were generally a bad idea anyway, and Jenny had made it a point never to let things go beyond that mild flirtation stage.  
  
Right now, however, she couldn’t really remember any of the reasons why it was a bad idea – she only knew she’d had a terrible week, that it felt good to have someone else attracted to her, and that Sarah was awakening feelings in her she hadn’t felt in quite some time.  
  
“Are you sure?” Sarah was saying. “I don’t know, Jenny…”  
  
“Yes, I’m sure,” said Jenny firmly, before she could change her mind. “I want to, and I know you do too.”  
  
*   *   *   *   *  
  
Jenny caught Sarah’s look as she slid her skirt down over her hips, and then unbuttoned her blouse. “What?” she asked, a trifle defensively. Somehow she knew what Sarah was going to say.  
  
“Oh, it’s nothing. I just thought you’d be the kind of woman who made sure _all_ her clothing matched, that’s all.”  
  
Jenny grimaced. “Let’s just say that this,” she gestured to her underwear, “is the source of all my problems today.”  
  
Sarah smiled in amusement. “Well, you’ll pardon me if I don’t feel particularly sympathetic. After all, it led you here, didn’t it?”  
  
Jenny supposed she had a point, and she smiled back. “I suppose it did.” Although she couldn’t help but look enviously at Sarah’s matching burgundy bra and panties, the colour setting off her olive skin perfectly.  
  
Sarah sat down on the bed, reclining back into the pillows and beckoning for Jenny to join her. Jenny had barely got herself comfortable when Sarah kissed her again, her fingertips running along the edge of Jenny’s bra where it met flesh. Jenny could feel her nipples responding under the fabric, and she arched her back slightly, a silent invitation that Sarah understood immediately.  
  
There were a few seconds of fumbling before the clasp came undone, and then Sarah was pulling the bra away, her fingers returning to graze Jenny nipples, the sensation making Jenny sigh into Sarah’s mouth.  
  
She slid her own hand around Sarah’s waist and up her back, wanting to return the favour, but Sarah broke away for just long enough to whisper, “Wait,” and then kissed Jenny again as her hand cupped Jenny’s right breast briefly, before trailing downwards, her touch making Jenny’s skin tingle.  
  
Sarah’s fingers hesitated at Jenny’s belly button just long enough to make Jenny whine in frustration and part her legs slightly, and then they slipped inside her underwear  
  
Jenny cried out softly as Sarah’s fingers slid between her legs, stroking gently at her clit in a way that her fiancé had never quite mastered. The teasing movement had Jenny gasping within moments, the sound turning to a startled exclamation of “Oh!” when Sarah suddenly stroked harder at the same time as she lowered her mouth to Jenny’s nipples.  
  
She couldn’t last long like this, and Sarah’s ministrations swiftly brought her to her climax, her orgasm uncoiling inside her and flowing through her limbs in a heated wave until her whole body was tingling.  
  
“ _Oh_ ,” she said again, although this time it came out as a sigh of pleasure.  
  
Sarah bent to kiss the corner of her mouth, her dark eyes glinting with satisfaction. Jenny smiled lazily up at her.  
  
“This isn’t quite what I expected to happen when I threw myself on your mercy tonight.”  
  
“Me either.” Sarah moved her fingers again between Jenny’s legs, drawing a tiny moan and an involuntary twitch.  
  
“Oh, stop,” said Jenny breathlessly. “You’re going to kill me.” Summoning up some energy, she pushed at Sarah gently until the other woman was lying on her back. He hand stroked across Sarah’s stomach, revelling in the feeling of the smooth skin there. “And if you do that, how I will return the favour?”  
  
As Sarah’s eyes fluttered closed at Jenny’s touch, Jenny decided that her rules were definitely going to require some adjustments.


End file.
